Why advertising should be left to cowboys

WALT RUMMEL

Published
8:00 pm EDT, Sunday, May 2, 2004

The merchants watched window displays and bargains not only in their own towns, but they often took a swing through neighboring communities, looking at their offerings and their attractions. They'd never heard of K-Mart or Wal-Mart, but they felt mail order catalogs were tough competition.

In those years, a town went all-out for important birthdays, such as the 50th, the 75th and the "Centennial. They might stage a festival every decade or so, which they labeled "Homecoming" or "Fourth of July. The county fair was the only annual event that was sure to call for a festival, so Huron, Tuscola and Sanilac, combined, seldom offered more than four or five big events in a year.

Coincidentally, the side-by-side towns of Pigeon and Sebewaing discovered one summer day, about the middle-1950s, that each had scheduled a festival, Sebewaing on the last weekend of June and Pigeon on the first weekend of July.

In those days the Wallace and Morley Elevator was located in the middle of town, where the railroad track crossed Main Street. There the Pigeon festival planners got an early start with their advertising, erecting an enclosure out of planks and moving in a small building, some 10 x 12 feet. In that enclosure they kept two beautiful black Angus steers, with a big sign notifying locals and visitors that here was the main course for the Festival Beef Barbecue.

What a brilliant idea! Right in the middle of town! Watching those steers chomp away on good protein, preparing for the barbecue they would never live to see!

Locals walking by the Elevator stopped to admire the sleek animals. Visitors stopped their cars, smiling, reading the signs, making a mental note to get their medium-rare, mouth-watering barbecues!

Meanwhile, 15 miles to the south and west, Sebewaing Chamber members were planning their Homecoming Festival, just one week earlier. They couldn't have a better food offering than Angus barbecue, but there must be some way we could profit from their venture.

The winning thought struck me a few days later when I came to Pigeon and visited the steers. As I leaned on the plank fence, the big animals pushed against a plank to reach a sprig of clover growing along the fence. I reached down, pulled up the plant and offered it to the nearest animal. It came over willingly and quickly, wrapping its tongue around the plant and obviously being quite pleased.

An entire program of ideas came to me in that one instant!

Late some night, when Pigeon would be buckled down until dawn, we would sneak into the steers' pen and paint a "Sebewaing" ad on the steers' sides, with gleaming WHITE PAINT!

The plan was so good, so well-displayed that everyone would see it and they'd hee-haw the Pigeon Festival people. Imagine! The Pigeon Festival's two Angus steers with Sebewaing advertisements painted in gleaming white on their jet black hides!

This would be GRAND!

Enlisting two Sebewaing conspirators, one of them the hometown photographer (who shall be unnamed), we picked midnight Saturday night as the time for our Brilliant Deed!

I couldn't wait for Saturday evening, and by 11 p.m. we had driven through Pigeon's business section several times. By 11:30 all the businesses in that area were closed, except for the hotel bar, just across the street. There, people were coming and going, paying not the least attention to the darkened area around the steers' pen.

I was so very proud of my plan: We had a big bundle of soft green alfalfa to lure the steers, a flashlight, hats pulled down over our faces, and two good-sized spray cans of luminescent white with which we'd paint "Sebewaing Festival" on each side of both steers.

Having raised a 4-H calf while a high school freshman, I knew all about beef animals, of course, so I was in charge of the painting. The photographer would hold the animals' attention with the tasty alfalfa, and would hold the flashlight to light my printing job. Our companion was outside the plank fence to watch for possible trouble from the single police car on duty.

The instant I slipped across the top of the fence both steers pushed into their roofed shed in one lighting-fast shuffle. I saw it was a two-foot doorway, as the animals passed in and out easily and comfortably. Clucking and humming softly I moved, oh so slowly, into the shed with them, proffering the alfalfa, always in a slow motion pattern. I whispered to my companion, "Don't come in. Just shine the flashlight onto this steer".

The steer next to me blinked in the glowing light, watching suspiciously, as I positioned my white pressure paint can. Slowly. So slowly. When the steer reached over, pulling another handful of alfalfa, I pressed the button on the spray can and the "s-s-s-s-s-s" hissing began.

What happened next I never saw, and don't remember.

In one instant that shed was full of two flying Angus steers and one flying sign-painter, who still doesn't know how he ever got through that narrow doorway in the same instant with two 1,200-pound steers.

I know I landed on my back, outside the shed, while two huge black figures sailed above and around me. The only reason I wasn't crushed by flying hooves, I think, was because those animals never once touched the ground, they seemed to zoom about two feet above me.

My injuries were minor: Two broken hips, a fractured back, dislocated shoulders, sprained wrists and ankles and a fractured skull. Finally the animals tired and pushed into the shed, and I began to pick myself up. I had much more on me than alfalfa sprigs, and my companions laughed like crazy hyenas. They leaned against the plank fence, laughing so hard. shedding copious tears. They laughed and laughed. They didn't offer to help me pull off my pants and shirt, because I didn't want to get all that alfalfa on the car seats.

Finally we were back in the car, with me still testing this joint, then that, flexing hands, legs, toes and fingers. The photographer offered gallantly, "I'll drive home. You'll be more comfortable in the back seat".

He turned from the driver's seat with a question for me. "What will the attendant here think tomorrow morning when he finds a full, brand new pressure can of luminescent white paint in the steers' shed?"